freedom of normalcy—pandemic paradigm shift!

Intellectual progress usually occurs through sheer abandonment of
questions together with both of the alternatives they assume —
an abandonment that results from their decreasing vitality and
a change of urgent interest.
We do not solve them: we get over them.”

John Dewey


(a map of Norway /atlas.com

Yesterday I read a most wonderful post over on Mel Wild’s site,
In My Father’s House.
If you’ve never read any of Mel’s posts, I highly recommend them!
Nourishing food for both soul and mind!!

Yesterday Mel wrote about our need for a pandemic paradigm shift—
meaning we need to be looking at all of this current mess much differently—
lest we lose our ever-loving minds…
as in both our minds and freedoms are in very precarious
places these days.

Mel’s post began with this paragraph:

“Norway has become the latest country to drop ALL Covid restrictions
(see Daily Mail article here), joining an increasing number of other countries.
Norway will have no vaccine mandates, no vaccine passports, no masks,
no social distancing. Large venues, concerts, parties,
sporting events are all allowed, no restrictions on public places or
gatherings of any kind.

He went on to cite the an article by Kim Iversen of the Hill…
Iversen states that…
“the reason for lifting the restrictions isn’t what you would expect:

“The Norweigan government didn’t cite high vaccination rates or
even having the virus under control as justification for returning to
life as normal.
Instead, the Prime Minister said the lifting of restrictions is due to
fatigue in the public of constantly changing restriction and the lack
of normalcy in their daily lives.
She cautions that the virus is still with the world, so take
personal responsibility.”

What they’ve done is changed their whole mindset about the Covid pandemic

We should note that the Prime Minister of Norway is saying that she is lifting
the Covid restrictions in her nation not because Norway is the poster child
of vaccines and lower cases…quite the contrary..

But what she is saying is that in her country she is witnessing
an overwhelming fatigue of the people…
fatigue in the lack of normalcy in their daily lives…

She knows they do not have a huge vaccination rate and that Covid is still
very present in Norway…but she is allowing the citizens to make choices while
living a more normal existence—noting that Covid is now a new virus that will
most likely be with us from here on out…much like all the various flus
and other viruses we combat.

And that’s the thing…we deal with these other viruses by taking our
seasonal precautions—we opt to get vaccinated or not, we take vitamins,
we wash hands, we stay home when sick…

I think I much like Norway…might need to visit it one day!

Here is the link to Mel’s post:

https://melwild.wordpress.com/2021/10/01/its-time-to-shift-our-pandemic-paradigm/

I can feel it coming…

Between stimulus and response there is a space.
In that space is our power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

Viktor Frankl

I can feel it coming in the air tonight, oh lord
And I’ve been waiting for this moment, for all my life, oh lord
Can you feel it coming in the air tonight, oh lord, oh lord

Lyrics by Phil Collins


(a single leaf suspended between tree and earth / Julie Cook / 2021)

I can feel it.
The question however is, can you?

Can you feel it?
Can you sense it?
Or have you been too desensitized to that which is taking place
all around us?

Change– a great, mighty and yes, even grave change is in the air.

Many of us are already well aware that we cannot possibly know the time
nor the place…
But yet, this change is coming nonetheless.

A great many of us sense that the change is coming and coming soon.

It might be incremental at first.
Slow and innocuous.
Seeping in quietly yet deadly, like a colorless and odorless gas.

Maybe it’s merely what we’ve been witnessing taking place throughout our country
in these past few years…
think BLM, Antifa, the Proud Boys…

Was it born during a crusade?
Was it born in the dark ages of the plague?
Was it born in a Spanish Inquisition?
Was it born in France during the Reign of Terror?
Was it born in the birth of a young nation following its own revolution?
Was it born on the fields of Antietam, Gettysburg, Bull Run, Vicksburg,
Appomattox…or the scorched earth tactic ravaged on Georgia?
Or was it born in the corded nooses dangling from trees?

It might have been born in the mustard gas wafting through
the trenches of WWI ….
It might have been born in the death chambers and ovens of Poland
and Germany.
Maybe it was born in Stalin’s iron fisted USSR gulags.

Maybe it was born in a fast paced and currently overreaching technology.
Maybe it was born on the heaviness of 9/11
Maybe it’s born on our southern borders?
Or was it born in Benghazi or Afghanistan?

Or was it simply born in the disobedience found in a now hidden garden?

Has it simply been unfolding, ever so slowly, for eons?

Division.
Anger.
Resentment.
Fear.
Paranoia.
Bullying.
Lying.

The latest pandemic has only helped to embolden this ensuing change.

Mandates.
Masks.
Ultimatums.
Us vs them.
Passports.
The clean vs the unclean.
Freedom vs dictation.

Virus and illness vs death or life…

Elitism.
Wokeness.
Liberalism.
Cancel Culture.

Christianity, morality, conservatives all now equated to pariah.

Persecution?
Yes.

And with these overwhelming thoughts of change—
in that change is indeed a’coming–
I was actually amazed at the coming together of some giant collective
thinking taking place on a single afternoon.

First there was IB offering a telling vid clip based
on a post found on http://www.aier.org

And I think it’s that ‘in your face’ flaunting by a maskless Squad debutant
that has been truly the taunting on the cake.
An exorbitantly decadent who’s who Met affair featuring
the likes of a young woman feeling her oats, daring
to wear her statement of taxing the rich, stretched across her derrière
as she tips her bareless shoulder, rubbing it with her ever so rich fellow guests.
It was enough hypocrisy to last a lifetime.

The Best Defense Against Violence


https://insanitybytes2.wordpress.com/2021/09/15/the-moral-vacuum-kate-wand/

Then our dear wise sage Oneta offered up her own take on
this air of change with the following post:

MANDATES AND WEARY CHRISTIANS

Posted on September 16, 2021 by oneta hayes

“I’m just not watching anymore TV,” stated my friend.
We had just attended a meeting in which someone said the mess
in our country was our fault, speaking of senior-aged Christians,
laying the blame on our lethargy in letting “stuff” happen without speaking up.
I agree completely.

We have been taught “Live in peace with all men”
and “let there be no divisions between you.”
Letters to editors of papers and magazines—almost unheard of;
attendance at local political rallies—almost unheard of;
protests on the streets—almost unheard of;
spitting fire on tweeter—unheard of.
That’s the way it has been!
It is the fault of sleeping Christians.
Too often Christians point out that we do not fight the way the world fights.
Our duty is to put on the armor of God and pray.
Yep.
But do you believe even five percent of people who
claim to be Christians do that?
Even if we do that, it does not absolve us of having
an obligation to be good citizens of the nation in which we live.

Meanwhile the evil has crept in tide by tide so it is
now a huge wave swamping the land.
Boy scouts have to take girls; “rainbow”
no longer represents a promise of God;
urinals removed from restrooms because it might offend
“persons with no male genitalia;” babies murdered by the millions.

So it goes. Evil has overtaken us. And Christians are weary.

My nephew, Teral, put the following scripture on FB this morning.
And he shall speak great words against the most High,
and shall wear out the saints of the most High,
and think to change times and laws: and they shall be given
into his hand until a time and times and the dividing of time.

Daniel 7:25 KJ

This is speaking of the anti-Christ.
I do not know whether or not the anti-Christ now lives.
But I do know there are things happening right now that
are preparing the way for him.
The current “mandate” orders are a significant sign.

Other translations of the above scripture say
“saints are worn down, oppressed, persecuted.”
I am witness to that truth.

Another interesting thing about this scripture is
“think to change times and laws.”
Isn’t that referring to breaking down of traditions and laws?
Looks like it to me. We are certainly having a change in laws,
moral laws, even in Constitutional laws.
And traditions?
Now it is no longer to talk of mothers and fathers!
A combination of anything can be family –
if indeed one demands a family at all.

And lastly there was the wisdom of Mel Wild of In My Father’s House.
His latest post (actually last two posts) explores the current ignorance found
in those claiming that Christianity is actually Socialism in sheep’s clothing.
His post Sorry, Jesus is NOT a Socialist lays out the truth
that our current culture cares not to acknowledge.

https://melwild.wordpress.com

So let’s round out this small treatise with the master of drums himself,
Phil Collins…who sadly today, due to injury can no longer play his
beloved drums…

My heart shall become your heart (a re-post)

****I read a marvelous post yesterday over on Mel Wild’s site, In My Father’s House.
Here’s a link to the post:
https://melwild.wordpress.com/2021/06/29/compassion-more-than-all-our-doing/

Mel spoke about compassion—the compassion of Christ…
In his post, Mel examined the latest episode of The Chosen…the same episode
I had also discussed earlier in the week regarding Mary’s falling backwards…

As the storyline played out, we saw how Mary felt that Jesus would
never give her a second chance, not after she turned away from Him and that initial healing.
How could He?
He’d healed her once and here she’d turned away from that healing
and fell back into her old familiar and damaging ways.

But in that encounter between Savior and sinner, we see a deep
and unending compassion.

That touched a deep chord with me.

Falling and failing, over and over…
and yet we are only met, time and time again, with three simple words.
“I forgive you”

Here is a post I offered back in 2014.
7 years have passed…much has happened in my life
and in the life of our country in those past 7 years.

Yet the same need and desire remains….

“Give me all of you!!! I don’t want so much of your time,
so much of your talents and money, and so much of your work.
I want YOU!!! ALL OF YOU!!
I have not come to torment or frustrate the natural man or woman,
but to KILL IT! No half measures will do.
I don’t want to only prune a branch here and a branch there;
rather I want the whole tree out! Hand it over to me,
the whole outfit, all of your desires, all of your wants and wishes and dreams.
Turn them ALL over to me,
give yourself to me and I will make of you a new self—in my image.
Give me yourself and in exchange I will give you Myself.
My will, shall become your will.
My heart, shall become your heart.”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity


(Orchid / Julie Cook / 2014)

Oh that this strong request of yours could only be answered with a swift response of “yes.”
That I could and would whole heartedly shout at the top of my lungs
YES!!
YES!
I will give you myself.
All of myself.
I shall hold nothing back.
I am yours.
Yes, take all of me.

Yet, this demand of yours, this most intimate demand from the purest essence of Love,
is meet by my hesitation, my doubts, my frozen in time inability to immediately scream “yes.”
I hesitate.
Why?
I stumble over the words.
I hold back.

You reassure me.
You make me a promise
You have proven the promise.
And yet, I balk.
The “I” must be broken
Why can’t I let go?
Why won’t the “I” let go?
Am I afraid of being broken?
Being broken by you would be so much better than remaining whole as the captive of “I”
Still I find the words unable to slip from my mouth.

You sense my hesitation.
You see my reluctance.
You take my hand.
Suddenly, within that single touch, there is a cosmic explosion which shakes the very foundation of my world.
At the very moment you touch me, there is something so overpowering, something so beautiful which takes places.
I have never felt this before.
A connection
A oneness
It’s as if the brokeness, which I never fully comprehended, is immediately made whole.

And just as quickly as our hands meet, I pull away.
I look away.
It’s all too much.
I can’t.
If you honestly knew, knew everything, you’d walk away
You should walk away.
Others are better than I.
Others have not done the things I have done.
The things I am ashamed for you to discover.
You really don’t want me.
You really don’t know me
You really don’t know. . .

But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob,
he who formed you, O Israel: “Fear not,
for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.
I give Egypt as your ransom, Cush and Seba in exchange for you.
Because you are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you,
I give men in return for you, peoples in exchange for your life.
Fear not, for I am with you; I will bring your offspring from the east,
and from the west I will gather you.

(Isaiah 43:1-28)

The love song plays out,
You reveal everything I’ve hidden.
I am ashamed and want to turn away.
Yet you continue watching.
There is only acceptance in your eyes.
Pieces of a broken heart lay scattered on the floor.
You pick up the pieces, putting them back together,
handing me the final piece.

Again, You extend your hand.
You whisper my name.
“My heart shall become your heart” you whisper ever so gently–
“You will be mine and I will be yours” for all of eternity
Love lies bare and open between us.
“Behold, you are beautiful, my love, behold, you are beautiful!
(Song of Solomon 4:1)
I hear those words flowing from your heart.
A heart that has broken for me.
“Yes”
“Yes”
The word now slowly falling from my mouth.
Take me as I am and make me yours.
All that was is suddenly no more.
I will give you my heart…
I want nothing more than for my heart to now become your heart…
as the last piece of the puzzle is finally put back in place.

the strange times in which we live

If someone had said 20 years ago that Christians in this country,
which prides itself on its religious freedoms,
would soon have to gather in secret
for fear of being arrested or charged with ruinous fines,
they would not have been believed.

Dr. Gavin Ashenden


(areil shot of a Christmas pyramid / Julie Cook / 2013)

Seek ye the LORD while he may be found,
call ye upon him while he is near:

Isaiah 55:6

Reading this line from Isaiah yesterday I was struck by some of the wording…
as in ‘hit on the head’ sort of struck.

It was the use of the words ‘may be found’ and ‘while he is near’…
meaning, there is no guarantee that He will always be able to be found
nor that He will always be near.

Whoa.

So in turn, this must mean that there will be a time when what we take for granted will
no longer be around…
As in no longer available.
No longer an option.

I read this particular verse after I had read Dr. Gavin Ashenden’s
latest post.
A post that any Christian reading would find unsettling.
A post entitled “the turning of Christians into criminals.

The turning of Christians into criminals…

Dr. Ashenden was writing about a problem that he is currently witnessing taking place in the UK…
He writes about a current problem that is taking place in an area we’d normally take for granted.
The problem is the conducting of church worship and religious services.
Activities that normally would never be an issue but then again this year happens to be
anything but a normal year—and so everything and anything seems to be an issue.

And since there is a pandemic, there is thus a glitch.

Activities we take for granted such as exercising our religious freedoms, are
now a problem during a pandemic.
Or might the pandemic be a rouse; more of an excuse for those enemies of the
Faith to flex an intolerant muscle?

Dr. Ashenden’s lamentations might as well have been written about our lives
as worshipers here in the States.

The signs are very troubling on both sides of the pond in that there is very
little that seems to be separating us and that of our leadership’s approach to this pandemic.
In a word…shut them down…but by all means, keep Walmart up and running.

The good doctor notes:
“In an increasingly fluid situation,
where the church is coming under more and more destructive pressure,
every Christian ought to say to the Lord,
‘What would you like me to do in this situation?’,
and I want to recognise that some Christians will find that their role is
quiet and passive and prayerful and anonymous.
Other Christians on the other end of the scale may find themselves called to martyrdom.

“One of the things that has become clearer to me is that whilst this virus
is obviously a morally neutral biological phenomenon,
it has become the instrument for evil, if evil is expressed in terms of
attacks on the worship of Christ and the integrity and the
conscience of Christians as disciples of Christ.
And that’s certainly the situation we are facing now.”

If someone had said 20 years ago that Christians in this country,
which prides itself on its religious freedoms, would soon have to gather in secret
for fear of being arrested or charged with ruinous fines, they would not have been believed.
In deciding on this legal action, the courts have the opportunity
to avert this crisis, shun the path taken by the Marxist tyrannies of the past,
and bring this country back in step with hard-won, centuries-old traditions of liberty.

After reading Dr. Ashenden’s post, I next turned to read Mel Wild’s latest offering
over on his site, In My Father’s House

https://melwild.wordpress.com/2020/11/30/subterfuge-conspiracy-theories-and-myths-that-may-be-true/

Now whereas Mel’s post is more or less examining the madness known as “this election”,
he actually has some very similar feelings akin to Dr. Ashenden’s regarding this pandemic…
a pandemic that seems to be very much “an instrument for evil”
Evil on a multitude of levels.

“We may even be led to believe that this pandemic was an accident,
that it has nothing to do with other things we’ve endured in 2020—-
the George Floyd protests-turned-endless-riots,
Marxist BLM demands to defund the police, BLM and Antifa thugs terrorizing citizens,
looting and burning down some of our cities,
the economic lockdowns which severely damaged small businesses but greatly benefited
the corporate and big tech oligarchs,

and even the election chaos that’s still being uncovered right now.”

“Is this all just a coincidence?
Are these events unrelated?
Maybe so, but some experts say, no.
They say all it’s all very much connected.”

Mel does conclude however on a positive note of hope…
“Now, the good news! While it can be very discouraging when we see the
overwhelming evil that’s been perpetrated against our country,
I want to encourage you not to lose heart.
Not only has Christ already won the ultimate epic battle,
but we’re not done with the ideological and political battles either.
We must stay strong and put our hope in God, not political outcomes.

The script over this year has not been fully written, and many things are still in play.
This election is far from over. There are still many legal battles and surprises yet to come.
This all could just be a prelude to something unexpected and wonderful!”

And so I am brought back to where I began this little observational post, back to Isaiah.

I believe it would behoove all of us, no more importantly so than now,
in these odd times in which we find ourselves living,
to know that we must seek God—as in seeking Him now while He can still be found and
call upon Him by all means while He is still near to hear…
because sooner rather than later, He will have moved on…taking many with Him,
but sadly leaving many behind.

For you see it’s a choice on our part.
We follow Him or we don’t.
There is no time for capitulation and no time to kneel before the State.

Seek and call…now, while the time remains…

call me a rebel working with the saints

“I rebel; therefore I exist.”
Albert Camus

“Until they become conscious they will never rebel,
and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.”

George Orwell, 1984


(James Dean, from Rebel Without a Cause)

I read a great post yesterday over on Mel Wild’s site, In My Father’s House, and wanted to share.
It was posted on Halloween and Mel notes that since it was Halloween, ‘why not share our
favorite horror story of 2020—COVID 19 lockdowns.’

I want to share his words because, despite our current election diversion, we may have
missed the fact that most of Europe is currently going back under pandemic lockdowns.
And given the results of our election come Tuesday, we might be headed back down the same
dismal path.

But we are being told that it is all in the name of science you know.
But what is that science really?

So is it a bad thing to want to stop the spread of a pandemic?

Of course not… but the trouble that is found in this train of thinking, which is
supposedly based on “expert recommendations”, is that we must examine who
these experts are, we must determine who they work for and we must exhaust all
our options rather than jump straight to putting the final nail in the coffin.

Despite my rule-following, conservative, law-abiding demeanor, I have been known to harbor
a bit of a rebellious thread.

So when “the” government and the powers that ‘want to be’ are clamoring that we must
suppress the people in order to suppress a virus, I begin to wonder what is
the real angle…
what is the drive to this suppression?

So I find Mel’s post quite enlightening.
Mel bases this latest post on the words of Thomas Woods,
Senior Fellow at Mises Institute and New York Times bestselling author of 12 books.

Mel states that…as Woods put it recently,
the COVID shutdowns around the world have proven that the cure is actually worse than the problem
in more ways than one, which of course is a controversial thing to say,
but it’s hard to argue with the evidence.
I personally have been frustrated by the continued politicization of lockdowns in the name
of preventing the spread of the virus.
On that note, here’s a recent email Woods sent out about how these lockdowns
have failed to stop the virus around the world.
(Trigger warning: Woods’s views are quite libertarian and not politically correct!):

“With Massachusetts seeing a rise in “cases,”
I saw someone on Twitter lamenting that he and his fellow Massachusetts residents
had “dropped the ball.”

Notice that this person cannot admit that the voodoo doesn’t work.
It’s always because the peasants didn’t comply enough.

If you stupid people would just obey us, this thing would go away!

I understand why progressives might be attracted to this way of thinking:

(1) They hold a superstitious belief in the powers of the state —
so if the state says it can wipe out a virus, who’s to say it can’t?

(2) It involves “experts” dictating to the stupid rubes,
which is their preferred model of governance.

(3) It allows them to ridicule the working-class people they despise — why,
if only these backward hicks would “follow the science,” we’d be out of this thing already!

But let’s face facts:

Lockdowns only delay the inevitable, and they leave wreckage in their wake.
(And forget about masks: as I’ve shown before,
mask mandates have no discernible effect on the spread of the virus.
If they were as effective as people say — e.g.,
if we’d just wear masks for six weeks, we’d be out of this! —
there should be some obvious effect on the charts, but there just isn’t.
Believe me, I wish masks could solve the problem so I could get the rest of my life back.)

And what is the point of indefinitely depriving ourselves of what makes life worth living,
so we can live in an antisocial dystopia?
What are we staying alive for then?
So we can sit at home and stare at the wall?

There are other concerns in the world apart from COVID-19.
Incredible that this should have to be said.

Even some of the elderly are starting to say:
I’m at the end of my life, and you want me to spend my final months and years
like a vegetable?
What’s the point?

Meanwhile, vastly more deaths are being caused elsewhere by the policy.
Oxford’s Sunetra Gupta just published a column in the Daily Mail arguing that
the response to the virus has been worse than the virus itself.

Even the New York Times noted that excess deaths from TB, HIV, and malaria
caused as a direct result of the lockdowns will exceed two million.

I could go on and on about the collateral deaths,
but I’m probably sounding like a broken record by now.

As Professor Gupta puts it, “Lockdown is a luxury of the affluent;
something that can be afforded only in wealthy countries —
and even then, only by the better-off households in those countries.”

By the way, Prof. Gupta describes her politics as “left-wing,”
and is aghast that people think she’s part of a right-wing conspiracy
because she opposes barbaric lockdowns.

Mel finishes out his post with these words:
As we observe a day that celebrates fear,
let’s think about how we’ve been continually indoctrinated by the politically-motivated
fearmongers during this pandemic in an election year.
Let’s think for ourselves and do own research.
Again, let’s be safe and use common sense with regard to protecting our vulnerable,
but let’s also not give into fear and stop living our lives.
We need to safely open up our country and get back to living again.

Here is the link to the full post–Mel includes a video of Thomas Wood
addressing this concern

https://melwild.wordpress.com/2020/10/31/halloween-covid-dystopia/

And since today is All Saints Day, I am reminded of those souls who have
gone before us–those who we proclaim as saints—
They are saints because in actuality they were rebels.
They fought the status quo, tyrannical powers, and heresies
all in the name of God, fighting His good fight and giving their lives
by speaking Truth when Truth was unacceptable.
They lived and died for the Lord they loved and knew…
and may God help us to be one too…

I Sing a Song of the Saints of God
words by Lesbia Scott 1929

I sing a song of the saints of God,
patient and brave and true,
who toiled and fought and lived and died
for the Lord they loved and knew.

And one was a doctor, and one was a queen,
and one was a shepherdess on the green:
they were all of them saints of God, and I mean,
God helping, to be one too.

2 They loved their Lord so dear, so dear,
and God’s love made them strong;
and they followed the right, for Jesus’ sake,
the whole of their good lives long.

And one was a soldier, and one was a priest,
and one was slain by a fierce wild beast:
and there’s not any reason, no, not the least,
why I shouldn’t be one too.

3 They lived not only in ages past;
there are hundreds of thousands still;
the world is bright with the joyous saints
who love to do Jesus’ will.

You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea,
in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea;
for the saints of God are just folk like me,
and I mean to be one too.